


The Bystander Effect

by YawningOverTheTapestries



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Different First Meeting, Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Chance Meetings, I'm Sorry, Implied/Referenced Drug Addiction, M/M, Minor Character Death, No I mean serious angst, Suicide Attempt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-10
Updated: 2015-01-10
Packaged: 2018-03-07 00:10:09
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,078
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3153449
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/YawningOverTheTapestries/pseuds/YawningOverTheTapestries
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It is entirely unclear who got saved by the other.<br/>Which is completely fine.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Bystander Effect

**Author's Note:**

> I dreamed this up last night, and wrote it in a rush this morning.  
> I have a sick, sick mind.

Damn the 743, the only bus that comes up onto and crosses this bridge. And John watches it, this dull white metal arrogance on wheels, roll past him just as he’s gone too far away from the bus stop to show he’s still waiting. He’s only annoyed because he knows his leg will hurt if he bears his weight on it for too long, and the train station is not a long walk at all from here.

 

It’s not something anyone can get used to, no matter how much time they have: a feeling of stupid helpless inferiority. In the space of less than six months, he’s regressed from being able to carry God-knows-how-many-pounds of body armour under the Afghan sun for a march that lasts for hours, to being utterly unable to stand squarely on his feet for more than five seconds. All it took was a bullet… all John can do to deal with it, is try and push it from his mind.

Still, if he goes slowly, he can take his mind off that, by getting a good view of what’s beneath the bridge: it’s the Thames, and here it winds deep and brown and narrow, flanked by unkempt banks. Because it’s so far from a road, it hardly gets seen and taken care of often enough. Even from something like six storeys off the ground, it’s easy to see. It’s like a bridge over a motorway, without the unending cacophony of the traffic. He tucks his free hand into a pocket to warm it up.

It’s funny, how John feels lonely enough when he’s surrounded by noise. Now, when it’s almost silent, it’s deafening.

 

It’d be a hard miss, for him to notice that he’s not alone on this bridge.

 

 

He’s right at the other end of the crossing, so John takes a few steps closer to look properly. He’s tall, fleeting-looking, as a black pirate flag against the white sky, the tails of his coat flaring out in the wind. John can’t help but wonder for a moment, what a man like him is doing in a place like here. He’s young, almost too young to be dressed that well. His light greenish eyes seem to disappear off into the distance, before lowering slowly. His face is blank, yet, deep beneath the surface, somehow, sad, thinly sad.

The wind stirs at his curly hair, before dropping. Like the flag is being drawn down.

What he does next turns John’s insides into ice.

 

The strange man, moving smoothly yet expressionlessly, carefully carries himself over the railing, his hands firmly on it, clinging on, as he rearranges himself behind the bar, spread-eagled, back straight, and glaring down, down into the valley to the river below. There’s no mistaking what he’s readying himself to do.

John can’t breathe, everything from his head to the end of his spine freezing. But he edges forward, actually reaching out with one hand, and says, louder than he thought he’d dare to, “Don’t.”

 

He turns his head, sharply, before turning back.

Again, John says “Don’t do it,” louder, so he practically sounds desperate. Which is mad. John doesn’t know anything at all about him.

But he’s not going to let him go.

 

“ _Don’t move,_ ” the man suddenly snaps at him. His voice is deep, sharp, direct. “Stay back.”

“Why d’you want to do this?” John asks in a lower voice, making an overture of another step forward.

“I said _stay back_ ,” he orders, turning to lock eyes with John. There’s something wild in his eyes, angry and uncontrolled, as if he’s not bothering to restrain himself.

“Or I’ll let go. I want to, and I will, once you stop distracting me and _go away_.”

John rises his eyebrows, his demeanor turning mildly bemused. “I’m distracting you? How can I be distracting you?”

“ _What_ do you want?” the strange man asks, which makes John’s face fall.

 

What _does_ he want? Why did he get involved in this? He doesn’t know a single thing about this stranger, not even so much as his name, let alone what drove him to come to this bridge to jump off it.

But whatever it was, John doesn’t want to know, because he knows how it hurts. He knows it’s the prerequisite of how it hurts, and it’s not something he’d ever want to share.

But here he doesn’t exactly have a choice. His hand closes stiffly round the handle of his cane.

 

“I’ve been where you are. I know what it’s like, you want to end it all, right?”

The man scoffs, frowning bitterly; he’s scorning any idea of anyone empathising, and John realizes he had been expecting it.

“I don’t care anymore.”

“Okay,” A fear of him disappearing off the bridge to his death with a single incorrect word, comes welling up in John. He shifts his weight on and off his bad leg. “But even if you don’t care, there must be someone who does. Someone who’ll care if you… ”

He leaves the sentence trail unfinished, pretending he’s doing so out of prudence, even though they both probably know that he doesn’t mean to.

“Nobody’s going to care. I doubt they’ll even notice,” the man continues flatly.

“Don’t say that. How can you say that? Someone’s surely going to miss you.”

“No they won’t,” comes a thick harsh retort.

“Okay… listen, I don’t want to… ”

“Well, what _do_ you want?” he asks again, still hard and angry.

 

Reminding himself of how to throw caution to the wind, John draws in a deep breath. “I... I want to get you to come back over.”

“For God’s sake… ” the man sighs under his breath, before turning straight to John again, face to face. “ _Why?!_ ”

 

Suddenly, inexplicably, John’s fear drains away. Maybe because he’s got this man’s full attention, or maybe because he knows what he’s looking at.

This is the kind of thing he gets a kick out of: to become a soldier he’d had to be this way. And that just would seem beyond wrong now. Not for the reason that there’s a life in the balance, that can’t be just it – John’s too used to peril for this to chill him like it does. This stranger decided himself, to throw away what’s left of what he’s got, and that will always be beyond John’s reach. No matter what he can do to make him change his mind.

Regardless, John bites the proverbial bullet. His voice drops to a wisp that could wake the dead. “Just over a month ago, I nearly put a gun in my mouth.”

 

 

“Did you?” the stranger asks offhandedly, not looking in his direction.

“ _Yes_. And I didn’t. And I don’t… I don’t want _you_ to die either.”

 

They’re facing each other again. Silence fills out the seconds that eke past them.

“Look at you,” John sighs, “You’re so young. You’ve got so much of your life ahead of you.”

His eyes wide, John doesn’t expect himself to forget this face in the near future; the strong yet elegant lines and angles of his face, the high cheekbones, those sparkling eyes, even in this warp of fury and despair and confusion, he’s so striking.

And then he says something that takes John’s breath away.

“And _you_ can’t possibly be bluffing.”

 

 

John wants to spit out _what the hell do you mean?_  almost in delight – there’s a hope that he really _can_ save this poor soul – but instead he just gawps.

“Not just one, but two enormous, potentially catastrophic, withdrawals from your life in a fraction of time. The sort of thing that would reduce most men to a husk of their former self.”

John blinks. The stranger leans his head a careful angle, curving his arms round the railings to anchor himself.

“A recent discharge from the army resulting from injury on duty, and a breakdown of your marriage, both hitting you at once, and here you are now, trying to talk a suicidal train wreck of a man off a bridge.”

 

His throat drying fast, John clears his throat, and wills himself to say “How did you… how did you _know_?”

“I didn’t know, I noticed.”

 

Turning away into a comfortable position, to neaten up all the information piling in his head before presenting it, he begins.

“Your haircut, the way you carry yourself says military. Your stance shows you’re left-handed, and you carry that cane in your right hand, so your injury is probably on the left side of the body, I’d wager your shoulder. Most of what you’re wearing, recently laundered, but they’re… over five years old, which says you’ve been out of the country for a decent length of time, only to recently return, so certainly you were invalided home from your tour not long ago. At present you’re standing still, with nothing to suggest there’s any injury to your leg, which means it’s at least partly psychosomatic – you underwent some serious trauma. Wounded in action, then. Also, your Tag Heuer watch, old but expensive and in excellent condition, one of your few luxury items. Not the sort of gift a wife would give, and I don’t have a word to say about your family, but a good friend might have given you that. Possibly a friend from your regiment. The army certainly was a major part of your life. That lower left button of yours is slightly too low for you to periodically unfasten it without noticing, but it’s been open since before you first saw me. Aside from that, the pale line round your left ring finger indicates you’d been wearing a wedding band before you left for the Middle East, and only recently removed it. If she’d left you, you might still be wearing it. People sometimes do for a while, sentiment – at least, until the divorce papers get signed. But no, you wanted rid of it, _you_ left her. And the fact that you might’ve wanted to keep your hand warm probably explains why the button’s undone. After all, you haven’t been back in the country that long.”

 

As he finishes, he dips his head, spent of words and appearing to be glad of it. All _that_ is far too impressive for a simple ‘Goodbye, cruel world.’

 

“Bloody hell… ” John is dazzled. “ _How_ did you notice all that?”

“It’s what I do.”

“That’s _amazing_ ,” is what he’s rewarded with from John; a weak smile creases his features, struggling to come through.

John of course can’t read him as easily as he can be read himself, but something shows. Something like hope.

 

Offering his hand, in earnest this time, John starts coaxing him again. “That _is_ amazing. Really. And you can’t let that brain of yours go to waste.”

As a suntanned left hand closes lightly round his wrist, the stranger’s curly head remains bowed, as if he’s in prayer, for a moment, before turning down to look at this kind gesture.

“Come on, I’ll help you over.”

John is close by now, so the strange man has to turn right over his shoulder to look squarely at him. He strongly keeps up the eye contact, but doesn’t move any further.

 

“I’m John. John Watson,” he introduces himself. Offering more encouragement. Even though he doesn’t seem to actually inspire very much.

 

“Did I get any of that wrong?” he asks, his voice thinned of any emotion. Almost beseeching. Unsure of whether or not that actually was the last deduction he’d ever make.

“One thing,” John replies, dropping the end of the sleeve, reaching into his opened pocket, and producing a loop of chain with a golden ring threaded onto it. It’s a wedding band, clearly, and the wear on it is nearly a decade old, though it makes it look a little older. It’s also the right size to fit round his finger.

“I didn’t leave Mary. She died. Car crash about two months ago.”

 

The stranger’s jaw drops, a cloud passing across his face. “I do apologise.”

John shakes his head, still as cordial as he’d been all this time. “We married far too young. She’d been cheating on me while I’d been in Afghanistan. I did wonder why the letters stopped.”

 

Almost without realising it, the stranger lets his eyes roll. John actually grins. “I didn’t know what to do. She didn’t tell me anything for ages, and then once it all came out she nearly started blaming _me_. Saying I didn’t want her enough. We’d been living apart for weeks when the accident happened.”

“I suppose it would be something of a condolence, knowing it was an accident,” the stranger remarks drily.

“I suppose, yeah. I felt so guilty, which didn’t exactly help the fact that I’d been shot in the shoulder. While she’d been sleeping with another man. I don’t know why, but I still loved her.”

“Loved?”

 

John had nearly missed a beat – he’d accidentally on purpose used past tense.

“Loved… yeah. Yes, I did. And now… I, erm… ”

 

“Well?”

“Nothing.”

John sighs, rolling the metallic band round his fingers one more time, before stepping to the railing himself, and letting the chain slide out from his fingers, and he watches it disappear below the bridge.

Now it’s the stranger who's been robbed of words, watching the beautiful melancholic yet peaceful expression crossing John’s face.

He offers a smile as they look to each other again. “It’s the way life goes. Sometimes you can’t stop bad things happening. But you can choose to let them get to you.”

 

 

“John… ?” A faint little voice escapes into the open.

“Listen. I _know_ it gets bad. It gets bloody horrible sometimes. But it gets better.” John lets his cane lean against the railings so he can free up both hands, reaching to openly invite him to turn round properly, to show him that all he needs to do is step over the bars. “It _really_ does get better. You just need to learn to find a way to let it get better. Maybe you just need to let go of one little thing, and then it starts to get easier.”

 

The stranger blinks as if there’s a blinding torch in his eyes, as if John’s smile is far too lovely for him to look directly at. He has no need to hold John’s hands, as he slides himself over the bars, slowly but full of grace, just as he’d done going the other way.

Smoothing the folds of his coat, he stands straight, but his eyes dart here and there, as if he’s unsure of what to do next.

 

John feels his lungs empty, relief flooding him. He just saved a stranger’s life, something that’s far from new to him, but _this_ is a first. This sorry soul could see no light in the world five minutes ago. Then John found him and gave him means to not give up. Gave him hope.

It sounds a bit ridiculous, but John does not care as he finds himself asking for his name.

“Sherlock Holmes,” he says, simply. Knowing, rather wisely, that his name seems quite trivial compared to what just transpired here. There’s nothing that connects these two men, but when one of them wanted to end his life on this bridge, the other had been staggeringly kind enough to save his life, without any prejudice, any preconditions whatsoever, at the unbelievably tiny chance of them meeting. That’s a debt he’ll probably never live to fully repay.

 

“Thank you.” Sherlock shakes John’s hand, with a quietness and a humble courtesy to his voice he’s really not used to hearing.

 

“It’s the least I can do,” John replies, and he means it. He’s still sporting that kindly expression, in the face of the fact, that they now know what would normally be the first things two people learn about each other, and here, they are to be the last.

“Your cane has fallen over, by the way.” Sherlock comments. And it indeed has slipped onto the pavement, from its awkward angle against the bars.

“Oh, has it?” John almost laughs, which surprises them both a little. “This old thing… ” he forces a casual tone, picking it up and holding it oddly as if he can’t remember why he has it any more.

 

John gives Sherlock’s hand one more soft squeeze. “Well, it was nice to meet you… don’t let the bastards get you down again.”

“I… I’ll do my best.”

 

They’re both smiling uncomfortably at each other, delirious, breathless, knowing they’re not quite doing enough to reassure one another.

“That’s a fantastic thing, to be that clever. I doubt there’s anyone else alive today who’s quite as brilliant as that.”

Sherlock blushes, saying nothing.

“Look after that gift, Sherlock,” he finishes, as he’s already started to continue off the bridge; his limp half as bad as it was when John stepped onto the bridge, so he moves a little faster than either of them expected him to. Not that John knows what Sherlock’s doing, standing perfectly still behind him.

 

 

 

The sound of his name in John’s light clear voice is on a continuous repeating loop in Sherlock’s head, each time sounding more fantastic than the last. His compliments feel like shade in a desert, longed so badly for, after merciless ages of dazzling cloudless sunshine, leaving him hopelessly parched.

He’d never had any true comprehension of how lost he’d been, until he’d found John. Found a single point of reference on his empty map. And now he’s found what he’d been aimlessly wondering to find one day, it’s every bit the blessing he’d hoped it would be.

 

If he lets this chance go, he’ll never sleep again. His memory of his life being saved would slowly distort, and he’d become less and less convinced that this man actually had existed, rather than been the figment of some wonderful narcotic-fuelled fantasy.

Sherlock’s already well acquainted with the hell of a comedown; he used to think nothing could possibly be worse.

Until he laid eyes on an impossibly generous handsome stranger, and saw his loneliness, his love of danger, how strength and humility can renew themselves. And then began to watch him leave.

“John. Wait.”

 

It takes John a moment to stop and decide whether to rearrange his balance on two or three legs, sudden anticipation sparking across his face.

 

“Where are you heading?”

 

 

 

 

 

**Four years later…**

 

“Are you absolutely sure it was here?”

“ _No_ , but I haven’t looked at anything yet. Despite the fact we got here far too late to get a proper idea of how the level of rainfall affected here.”

 

“Rainfall?” Fanning his face, John gives the narrow riverbed a sardonic smirk; it’s virtually bone-dry, the Thames shrivelled down to a weak little trickle. The electric bright blue of the sky hasn’t a single blemish.

“The sodding drought, John. It’s been dry enough for long enough for the water to drain away, instead of soak into the ground properly.”

“Hosepipe ban my arse,” John scoffs, peering right down the wide emptying valley; under the stubborn British sun any evidence of rain falling the previous morning is completely gone. “So after Tolland dropped the bodies into the river, if the current was fast enough, they’d have been long gone by the time anyone found the wreckage of his car.”

“Precisely,” Sherlock announces, hunching over the mangled heap of dusty, steaming metal, blood drizzled on various places and flies hovering about. He carefully lifts the fronds of electric yellow tape to get his magnifier sufficiently close. “But as far as flash floods are concerned, anywhere on these few dozen yards could be a place where evidence could be left… but if anywhere’s a good place to start looking, it surely must be here.”

“Fair enough.”

 

After a few minutes Sherlock straightens up, closing his magnifier and exhaling hard, gasping into the hot air. Damp strands of his fringe cling to his forehead. “This is absurd. Just _how_ could there be anything to notice in the first place, let alone anything to come across hours later, once the water had been drained?” he mutters in his annoyance to himself.

John hums to show he’s still in a close enough proximity to listen, even though his back is turned, shading his eyes against the sun. The valley is so widely open, the bleached colour of the sun-baked ground almost white beneath the bright sky. Head up towards the bridge, which looms six storeys over the floodplain like a flyover, he gives a low whistle. “It’s Niagara Falls, Sherlock,” he comments half to himself.

Sherlock’s brushing the sweat off his forehead, and he looks up to the bridge, and down, and then back up with a very different expression.

“Are you blind, John?”

 

 

Over their years together John’s been at the receiving end of plenty of scathing insults, most of them pretty careless and not to be taken to heart – Sherlock himself gets retorts back sometimes. As a doctor, his partner certainly is qualified for a particular brand of sass. Like the earlier “Leave your coat here, Sherlock. You’re going to bake if you don’t.”

 

John peers long and hard at where his best friend is looking, ransacking through his memories for what his instincts are screaming at him about.

“Is that… that’s the bridge where - ”

“Yes.”

 

“Wow.” John answers in an awed tone.

 

They never once said it, but during the first six months they earnestly thought they’d hit the jackpot – someone to share the rent for a charming flat in Central London. They both made an enormous effort to convince each other that they’d just give it a whirl for a while. Their landlady makes an extortionate amount of fuss over them, both of them, and even now, they try not to think too much of why.

The cosy arrangement of just having one another around every day, gave them some confidence. They’re not going to judge each other, for whatever either of them would eventually be brave enough to share. John actually feels fairly comfortable talking about the war, about Mary: he’s doing well with facing his demons. Sherlock, though, turns his nightmares into the seam that joins him to his partner. It doesn’t matter, whether it’s at five in the morning in an empty attic with a corpse to babysit, or beside each other on the sofa over the newspaper after breakfast, or nestled close in bed together and still neither of them can sleep – John knows better than to talk about how he’d saved Sherlock from ending it all. Instead he takes up the duty he unconsciously signed up to, when he let Sherlock accompany him on the train back to London, years ago now.

 

Turning back to Sherlock, John sees the memory hit him. He stares unblinking at the bridge, brow furrowed, in a mix of puzzled and crestfallen, and a single tear slowly sliding down his cheek.

 “I’d never believed in fate, John. And I admit I still don’t. I can’t make a speculative assumption from one unique event. So I doubt I ever will.”

John tugs at his arm. “There’s nothing wrong with that.”

 

Sherlock’s head bows down, still lost in his own world. “I could have never met you. If you hadn’t been shot… you wouldn’t have even been in the country.”

John laughs weakly. “I’d been at Harry’s because I’d just needed somewhere to stay. And I’d been a lazy idiot who’d missed the first train and stayed cooped up in her spare room. If I’d been less sorry for myself I’d have left earlier, and be back home, probably long before you… ”

He knows Sherlock’s gaze is right on him, giving him his undivided attention. “Before you even got to that bridge.”

 

Those wounded-puppy eyes break John’s heart every time. “Hey,” he says gently, pulling him down to wipe the tear off Sherlock’s cheek, and press a chaste kiss to his lips.

“You saved me,” Sherlock announces, sounding like a ghost of his usual self.

John grins piously, as if after all this time, he’s still immensely flattered that someone would so much as have such esteem for him, and his hand moves down to rest against Sherlock’s chest. Over his heart. “I think we saved each other.”

Sherlock pulls John into another kiss, longer, lingering until something warm swells up in John’s chest.

“Perish the thought, John,” he replies in a tender voice.


End file.
